Shirley Heinze Land Trust is moving its headquarters to the former Trailyard Restaurant site in Valparaiso.
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Meadowbrook Nature Preserve, where the nonprofit is currently based, will continue to operate as a nature preserve. Property managers will be based there, Executive Director Kris Krouse said Tuesday.
This move was in the works for several months.
“The concept of a regional conservation center came out of some master planning and really thinking through how do we equip Shirley Heinze Land Trust to really perform its mission for the next 30 to 40 years,” he said.
Susan Zucker’s generous contribution in memory of her late husband, Paul Zucker, made the transaction possible. Paul, a former board member, led the capital projects team for several years, Krouse said.
The Trailyard property is adjacent to Creekside Trails, a Valparaiso city park that offers 13 miles of trails along a Salt Creek tributary. That’s appropriate, given that Shirley Heinze Land Trust will be downstream from the east branch of the Little Calumet River, where the nonprofit has done a lot of land restoration and public access work. Salt Creek is a major tributary of the river.
Over the years, Shirley Heinze Land Trust has acquired and permanently protected about 4,000 acres throughout Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Marshall and Starke counties. Most of the nature preserves are open to the public.
Acquiring a lot of that additional acreage over the last few years, along with innovative programming – farmland preservation, water quality improvements, best possible resources in urban and rural areas – and hiring interns has created considerable growth in the organization, which has required additional space to house employees and interns.
Last summer, the nonprofit had 14 college interns working on a variety of projects as part of their earth sciences education.
Zucker’s gift, along with “a phenomenal deal” to acquire the property from Stewart and Katherine McMillan, allowed the nonprofit to acquire the Trailyard property, Krouse said.
Stewart McMillan sees the property as ideal for Shirley Heinze Land Trust.
The former restaurant is about 10,000 square feet. Over the next year or two, it will be renovated for the new headquarters, housing 12 full-time staff members, temporary positions and accommodating “many, many partnerships and collaborations that will be meeting regularly and convening in the space,” Krouse said.
Interns will have the necessary space and technology to work from there and do presentations at the end of their internships to share what they’ve learned.
Krouse wants to create a centralized hub for land conservation in the region to not only show what Shirley Heinze Land Trust is doing as a land trust but also to connect people to the 30 other project areas and nature preserves throughout the six-county region.
“It will also be a place for learning,” offering interpretive space to learn about natural areas in the region and how to get involved in land conservation, he said.
“We’re just as excited about what Meadowbrook is becoming, which is a spectacular 300-acre nature preserve that is publicly accessible with nice amenities,” Krouse said.
Over the winter, the nonprofit will build new stewardship facilities there, offering a base for stewardship operations and land managers.
Meadowbrook Nature Preserve will continue to be an important resource for operations as well as community engagement and connecting people to nature, he said.
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Trailyard is less than five miles away. “It really situates the organization nicely for being able to grow into these much larger shoes we’ve created for ourselves over the next couple of decades,” Krouse said.
Doing the required renovations will mean additional fundraising efforts.
Krouse plans to move into the Trailyard space sometime in 2027.
The McMillan family created a wonderful space, he said, so “we’re not starting from scratch. We’re excited to make this place an asset for the community.”
“It’s going to be really kind of an entry point for other outdoor recreational users, whether it’s golfers or bike riders or people that are just passing by” to stop in and “meet people working hard to make the quality of life in this region really great,” Krouse said.
The former bike shop will become a nature center open to the public.
“The barn is exactly what they need to store all the equipment they have for all the properties they manage,” McMillan said.
McMillan was trying to find a buyer for the property when Krouse approached him. McMillan has a lot of respect for Krouse’s vision and abilities and lowered the price to what Krouse could offer.
“I originally was thinking about giving it to the city,” McMillan said Tuesday, but that deal wasn’t going through.
McMillan plans to donate the proceeds from the sale of the property to another nonprofit within the next few years.
He acquired the Trailyard Restaurant property where Stroud’s Harley-Davidson once stood after hiring his nephew with the intent of having him run a cafeteria planned for a public safety education building at the MAAC campus. McMillan then heard his nephew had a plan to turn the Stroud property into a restaurant, saw his vision, and built the restaurant.
“Restaurants are tough,” McMillan said. “I have a whole new respect for the restaurant business.”
“It was a great, grand experience that I would prefer not to repeat.”
When Krouse called, interested in the former restaurant site, McMillan learned a lot about Shirley Heinze Land Trust.
“I didn’t realize the size of the organization, the scope, how far-reaching they are,” McMillan said. “They take properties that are unbuildable and turn them into public recreation areas. That’s a pretty cool mission.”
At Trailyard and Creekside, “they’ve got some beautiful spaces to just sit and ponder life,” McMillan said. “It wasn’t that ideal as a restaurant, I would say. It’s too far off the beaten path,” he said.
“It’s a phoenix that’s going to rise from the ashes, for sure.”
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Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.